Ballot Selfie Laws Face New Scrutiny

During early voting in Ohio, Vice President JD Vance was recorded holding a phone inside the voting booth. Online commenters questioned whether he was photographing his completed ballot, an act prohibited by Ohio’s strict ballot-selfie ban. No formal charge has been filed, and the vice president’s press office did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiry. The incident has revived nationwide discussion about the legality of “ballot selfies.”

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Across the United States, statutes range from outright bans to permissive allowances. Ohio, Texas, Tennessee and West Virginia forbid any photo of a marked ballot, citing concerns that images could facilitate vote-buying or intimidation. By contrast, states such as Arizona, Texas (for mail-in ballots), Utah and several others permit limited photography. The National Conference of State Legislatures notes that Alabama, California, Colorado, Hawaii and Nebraska expressly allow voters to share ballot images. Historically, secret-ballot protections date to the 19th-century fight against coercive voting practices, a legacy that informs many modern bans.

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The Chicago Board of Elections explained that violations of Illinois’ selfie ban are usually resolved by an election judge asking the voter to stop, rather than by police involvement. “If a voter is seen doing it, an election judge may ask them to stop, and that’s usually where it ends,” — Max Bever, then the board’s director of public information In North Carolina, attorneys for the state board argued that voters may photograph the voting enclosure so long as the image does not include another voter or the marked ballot itself, and that a sample ballot may be photographed with permission. The board’s September filing emphasized these limited allowances.

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Jeff Hermes, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center, warned that broad bans “can be problematic” when they conflate election security with speech restrictions. He noted that discretionary enforcement creates uncertainty for voters. Jeff Zeman, attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), contended that the North Carolina prohibition infringes on First-Amendment rights. “Susan didn’t delay the polling place. She didn’t disrupt anybody’s voting at all. “The ballot selfie ban means that North Carolina voters lose their freedom to express themselves as they please, which is what the First Amendment guarantees,” — Jeff Zeman

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• “If a voter is seen doing it, an election judge may ask them to stop, and that’s usually where it ends,” — Max Bever, then the board’s director of public information

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• “Susan didn’t delay the polling place. She didn’t disrupt anybody’s voting at all. She wasn’t doing this as part of a vote-buying scheme,” — Jeff Zeman

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• “The ballot selfie ban means that North Carolina voters lose their freedom to express themselves as they please, which is what the First Amendment guarantees,” — Jeff Zeman

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